Photojournalist blinded by MPD projectile during 2020 unrest enters hospice care

Photojournalist Linda Tirado, who was partially blinded by a foam projectile fired by Minneapolis police during unrest in June 2020 has entered hospice care.

Tirado was injured while covering riots outside the police Third Precinct building following the murder of George Floyd.

Police “ignored the press credential she wore around her neck,” marked her with a “ballistic tracking round” and “shot her in her face with foam bullets,” according to her federal lawsuit, for which she was awarded $600,000 from the city of Minneapolis.

Tirado said in the lawsuit that police targeted her as she took photos outside the precinct building in south Minneapolis. According to the suit, officers ignored her press credentials and fired the foam bullet, striking her in the face and shattering her protective goggles.

Protesters escorted the bleeding Tirado to onsite medics who took her to a hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery. Tirado awoke the next morning to doctors telling her that she would be permanently blind in her left eye. She has subsequently undergone surgeries.

In a post on her Substack page about her health and the expense of palliative care, Tirado, 41, writes that she is dying. But she does not specify the diagnosis or whether it is related to her injuries. Tirado did not respond to messages seeking comment.

“I know that I’m lucky to have been diagnosed early, so that I have time to write another book or at least put all my journals in one place so that if I go sooner than we think I will, someone will be able to read them all and pull out enough words to publish on my behalf,” she said in her post.

“But I don’t feel lucky, or unlucky. I feel nothing but joy and peace and pain and fear, all of it all at once.”

However, Emily Wilkins, president of the National Press Club, said in a statement that Tirado “has traumatic brain injury from the blow and corresponding dementia. While she has battled, her condition has continued to worsen to the point she is at life’s end and receiving palliative care.”

Wilkins said most of Tirado’s $600,000 settlement has gone toward medical expenses.

“The Club recognized her work with the Aubuchon press freedom award, which carries a $1,000 prize,” she said. “We did not get to see her until after Covid, when she visited the Club wearing a black patch. She said kids in the airport would ask if she was a pirate. Yes, she whispered, she was.”

Tirado is an author whose memoir “Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America” led her to become a journalist covering an array of issues, including race.

“I’m a frontline journalist; that’s what I do,” Tirado said in a video interview with Mashable. “I don’t think losing an eye necessarily has to stop me.”